Good Sports

"People have traditionally underestimated the importance of sports in
presidential elections," Mary Dain, CEO of Dis-Dain Consulting Concepts,
recently told Joeydee News, "but the influence of sports in politics
actually trends all the way back to 1980. Everyone thinks Jimmy Carter
lost his re-election bid because of the Iran hostage crisis, but his
career was pretty much in the tank after letting that slow roller go
through his legs in the White House softball tournament. The Republicans
took a 3-2 lead heading into the ninth, and the Democrats were never
able to come back. Everyone kind of lost faith in him after that."

Joe Durette, chief marketing strategist at DDCC, agreed. "Everyone
remembers Ronald Reagan as the Great Communicator, but many don't
realize he was also known as the Great Shuffleboarder. If you had your
disc on 10 and he had one to play, you might as well give him the score.
It was a huge advantage with the octogenarian vote. Walter Mondale, on
the other hand, was more of a pencil-pushing crypto-gram kind of guy,
and it made him hugely unpopular. Nobody likes those puzzles.
Personally, that's always the page of the newspaper that I place under
the kitty-litter box."

"Bill Clinton might've had chicken-legs, but he could run like a
gazelle. People like that. In contrast, Bob Dole had a limp libido and
intermittent incontinence. Let's face it, nobody wants to see their
commander-in-chief waddling to the men's room with his cheeks squeezed
together in the midst of a World Peace Summit."

"We kind of won by default with G.W. in 2000 and Aught-four," Miss Dain
continued. "I remember when Al Gore showed up at the James Brady 5K Road
Race in red Pro-Keds, white knee-highs, polyester green shorts, and a
V-neck T-shirt. You just can't dress like that and gush on about 'your
Internet' without expecting to be labeled a nerd. We took the
High-School Bully vote by over 95% that year. Then came John Kerry with
his pearly whites, his wavy hair, and his polo shirts. He just had Yacht
Club written all over him. It doesn't matter how many times you win
America's Cup--sports fans just don't want to see that crap opposite the
football box scores in the sports pages."

"Things didn't go as well as planned this year," Durette confessed. "We
thought we had everything under control after Obama bowled a 47 and
threw all of those gutter balls. Pennsylvania and Ohio were falling like
duckpins for us. Then came that footage of him draining an outside jump
shot on the basketball court and hitting nothing but net. I mean, who
doesn't want a guy on their team who can hit a clutch three? We tried to
counter by having Sarah plug a few wolves from the chopper, but people
just didn't seem to get it. We got some mileage with Todd the First Dude
on the snow-machines, but that went south after the press disclosed
reports about all the silk underwear Sarah bought him. There's just no
way to connect Polaris and Danskin for Men without conjuring up some
pretty disturbing mental images. The thought was if we could get Sarah
on an Iditarod sled wearing some lacy Victoria's Secret garments we
might've been able to turn the election around, but it just wasn't the
right season for that."

"Right now we don't know what to do about Bobby Jindal. He has a sort of
JFK frailty about him. Preliminary tests have him scoring well in
curling and synchronized swimming, but we're not sure if there's any
potential there just yet. If we can get him to pull off a couple of
aerial 360's on a mountain bike, we might have something there."